


The Night is Shattered

by Mozzarella



Category: The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: Love/Hate, Obsession, Other, Unrequited, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-21
Updated: 2015-12-16
Packaged: 2017-12-15 15:35:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/851185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mozzarella/pseuds/Mozzarella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Desire only ever loved Dream. </p><p>But love destroys desire, and Desire has come into the habit of destroying love first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. We, of that time, are no longer the same.

**Author's Note:**

> I needed this. Special thanks to one poem by Pablo Neruda.

Desire destroys love.  
  
It's not the nature of desire to do so. Desire and love have always looped around each other, tied together in every pang of the heart. Love always accompanies desire, even if for the briefest of moments. Sometimes love stays longer, and fades away in time.  
  
Sometimes, love destroys desire. When there's nothing left to desire, love still lives, like a weed that's rooted with the sapling, choking it, killing it, and never really parting from it.  
  
Desire destroys love, so that love will not destroy it first.  
  
****  
  
Desire loves its siblings, despite itself. Love clings to the thought and memory of every sibling, even the ones Desire has sworn to hate.  
  
It loves Death, but it fears her as well.  
  
It loves Destiny, and likes him in equal parts, for his control and his soothing calm.  
  
It loves Despair, its own twin, for how could you not love one you are so alike with?  
  
It loves Delirium, so much as it despises her, for knowing everything Desire itself could never know.  
  
It loved Destruction, and hated him too. He was so serene, so good. So sickeningly easy to love.  
  
It loved Dream. Oh, but how it loved Dream.  
  
Daniel was their Dream now, but not Desire's Dream. Desire's Dream was Morpheus, who once loved Desire too.  
  
They once so close. Desire and Dream were never apart in the minds and hearts of humans, and other beings who lived and dreamed and desired in their turn.  
  
Perhaps it was in the moments Desire was not with Dream that it realized its love. And it knew, even then, how easily love destroyed Desire.  
  
And so, in its own fear, Desire destroyed what it had of Dream, before love could flourish.  
  
And Dream hated it for the rest of his days. Hated Desire for what it was, for the selfish, ugly thing that it was.  
  
And in its dismay, Desire realized that that only made it love Dream more.  
  



	2. Love is so short, forgetting is so long

_"Are you happy now?"_

"I got what I want." 

_"Ah."_

"... No, I'm not happy."

_"And yet you are fulfilled."_

"Fulfilled... and scared. I'm scared, Dream." 

_"I will not offer you comfort."_

"And I never asked for comfort, did I? I never asked anything of you, Dream, did you know? I never asked you for anything, but you always came to me. Whether it was to tell me I was your favorite, then berate me for being what I was. To scold me like a child, to threaten me, to ask me for help, to blame me... You call me reckless, you call me stupid, but of the two of us, who's made worse mistakes?" 

_"Everything you say now has already occurred to me. I see my mistakes starkly, and like my ruin, they are of my own devising."_

"Yes. Yes, your ruin. And still you don't see your greatest mistake, no matter how much you think you've learned, brother." 

Dream looked up, ever slowly. 

 _"And what mistake is that?"_ he asked carefully, thoughtfully. 

Desire took his hand, cradling it. 

"Cold," it said. "Like you. Do you remember Killalla of the Glow? Do you remember when the stars were young?" 

_"I remember."_

"So do I. The moment that you decided you hated me. I remember it well. You self-righteous bastard. As if you had any right to hate me. As if I was so cruel, to follow my nature. As if you haven't done worse than I ever have." 

_"I know of my sins, Desire. I know of what I must do to repent."_

"That isn't the point!" Its nails bit into the aspect of his hand, drew blood like the deepest night. It twinkled like stars burning out from lightyears away. 

_"What is... the point?"_

"The point is, you are selfish. More than I am, and I at least have the decency to admit it. You chose to hate me without considering that maybe I didn't want to hate you. You chose to alienate me, to make me an enemy, and never once wondered how long I loved you even after I fell out of your favor. I loved you. More than any creature that has ever lived or breathed or woken as an aspect in the worlds we know, I loved you. And in that moment you acted as though your love was the only thing that mattered, so easy to throw away for a slight, over a woman, one of many you would eventually come to love. I hate you now. I am glad that they're coming to kill you. I'm glad they'll rip you apart until there's nothing left. It's less than you deserve. I hate you, and you don't even have the fucking decency to remember when I did, past the moment you cut ties with me." 

It sank to its knees before its brother, sitting in the chair in his incongruous shirt and jeans, entirely impassive. 

A breath, and he was before his sister/brother. Another, and he sought its sharp eyes and kissed over the eyelids, and down to its mouth where a third breath was lost to him.

\--

There was a basin of water on the table, pink with blood spilled. Blood of family, blood of Dream's son, his only son. Laid across the sheets softer than silk, Desire looked at it from afar--the instrument by which Dream would die. 

Of it, Desire said nothing. 


	3. Overture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Desire saved All.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilers for the Sandman Overture.

It does not remember the moments it spent before his deaths, not anymore.

Three times.

Three times it came to Dream, and perhaps that was its mistake, to come to Dream and let Dream's spite turn it away, for all its good intentions.

But it does not remember that. It does not remember the first time, not the second.

It does not remember the glee it wished it felt the first moment Dream realized that it had been right all along, it does not remember the emptiness it felt in its great beating heart when it had failed once more and the worlds were slowly, inexorably unmade, and it gripped its cold brother's cloak, and then his hand.

It does not remember thinking of an End, and the fear of the End, despite its own nature as one who, by name, should be of the few who needn't fear it. But fear it did, and as Desire does, it made a choice not altogether wise, but a choice that was born of want, and drew its brother into a kiss, softer and tenderer than the sharp edges of desire ought ever to have been. It does not remember this, but thinks it can still taste the cold of Dream's mouth when it walks the deepest, darkest paths of the Threshold that was its own heart.

It does not, anymore, remember its time as a cat, a cat that Dream thought was himself. It might have liked to remember a time when their similarity, their closeness, was enough that Dream himself did not know Desire from himself, though everybody else seemed to notice.

It would have been nice to remember when Dream wanted it around. A want so strong that Desire's own shape seemed to trick the Lord Shaper himself. 

There was a vague recollection of it in the bone thin, pale hands that stroked its neck, the way one would a cat, when Dream came to confront it about Rose Walker, but that ended quickly when Dream threatened it. An empty threat, but a cruel reminder of what Dream's soft touches belied.

There is only one that remembers, and Dream does not know what Desire did for him, and would not have changed his views on his sister-brother if he did. Endless are not given to change, Dream least of all.

But he would have remembered, and it would have been a story, and a dream, one which Desire would have liked to have, all the same.

The story of how Desire saved All. 


End file.
